


and settles in as the gentle present

by weaponizedsoul



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: F/F, Farah POV, Post-Season/Series 02, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 16:50:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13150875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaponizedsoul/pseuds/weaponizedsoul
Summary: Sometime after the events of season 2, Amanda wants to make some calmer road trip memories with her new girlfriend. Farah finds that they've both changed a lot, but that isn't a bad thing at all.





	and settles in as the gentle present

**Author's Note:**

> It's still Christmas day! It is Christmas day night.
> 
> Huge thanks to my beta, Gabe, who is swansongcas on tumblr, and also to my artist pumpkino!
> 
> The title comes from a Welcome to Night Vale quote, "Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us? We can cope with that. We can do this together. You and I, drowsily, but comfortably."

Farah’s phone buzzed. A text from Dirk.

_hi farah! how is the road trip going??_

_Dirk, we have literally gone five miles. We’re at a gas station right now._

_so……. how is the gas station??_

_It’s… good? Amanda is getting snacks._

_great! have fun!_

 

Farah put her phone back in her pocket and looked up at the gas station. She could see Amanda inside, piling candy and chips into her arms. The road trip had been Amanda’s idea, because, “we need some _calmer_ road trip memories, you know? Not just being on the run from the government and tracking down psychic weirdos”. Farah had to admit she was a little apprehensive, but some time off did sound good, especially if it was with Amanda.

Amanda opened the door of the gas station with her shoulder, both her arms full of snacks, and walked jauntily over to the car. She held herself a little differently now, Farah had noticed. It was pretty subtle -- she had always been punk -- but it was obvious that she was more confident now, since meeting the Rowdy 3 and whatever had happened in Wendimoor. Farah had heard the basics -- learned how to weaponize her pararibulitis from a snail witch from another dimension -- but the two of them hadn’t had much time to talk before Amanda left on her new mission, and they’d both been pretty busy since then.

“Do we really need that much food?” Farah asked, opening the car door so Amanda could dump all the snacks into the back seat.

“The rest of the Rowdy 3 will eat whatever we don’t,” Amanda said with a shrug. “Beast likes the rainbow Twizzlers.”

They both got into the front seat of the car, Farah driving. As they pulled out of the gas station, Amanda turned to Farah and said, “Dude, you have _got_ to tell me how you killed the Mage. The police deputy said something about a car full of dynamite? That sounds _so badass_.”

Farah felt herself blushing, and she tried to bring her concentration back to the road ahead of her.

“I was just using what was there,” she shrugged, “shooting the Mage wouldn’t have done much, so, you know.”

“So you physically dragged yourself over to the gun and figured out what to do _while you were bleeding out_. That’s so cool!”

Farah smiled.

“I guess maybe it is,” she said. “What about you? What have you been doing? Have you found any other holistics yet?”

“Yeah, a few.” Amanda said, maybe a little shakily. “It’s like… all this stuff I’ve been learning, about my powers, about people like me and the Rowdy 3 and Dirk, about the future… I’ve seen the fabric of reality. It’s a _lot_ to take in.”

Farah looked over at Amanda for as long as she could manage and still keep the car in one lane.

“Amanda that’s… amazing. _You’re_ amazing. I can’t think of anyone better to do what you’re doing,” she said.

Amanda grinned and planted a kiss on Farah’s cheek.

“Thanks,” she said. “So -- where do we go first? Redwood forest? World’s largest chair?”

“I think the world’s largest chair is in Austria.”

“Oh. Too bad. We could’ve texted Dirk, he would have been so jealous.”

They drove onward, offering up suggestions for potential road trip destinations, swapping stories about the Bergsberg/Wendimoor case and their two months on the run before that. For how close they seemed now, in this car, on this road, it was strange to think of how much time they had spent separated. They hadn’t spoken at all, or even seen each other, for the entire case, even though they had both seen and done so much. They had only met again when Farah was in the hospital. Everything had been too recent to talk about then, and then Amanda had left to go looking for other holistics. Talking about it all now reminded Farah that even though they had started to like each other all the way back during the Patrick Spring case, their relationship was still so new. They had both become different people since then, and Farah wasn’t sure what that would mean going forward. What she did know was that she wanted to find it out with Amanda by her side.

They stopped at a sandwich restaurant in a small town to have dinner. The place had a grassy area out in front of it with some old picnic tables, and they sat there, eating their sandwiches and looking up at the darkening sky. They took their time eating in companionable silence. Farah wasn’t sure how many times she had felt this peaceful, but she thought it wasn’t a lot. It might even be none. Something would probably intrude on that eventually, if the way all of their lives worked was any indication, but that thought was only a background worry, barely a worry at all. Whatever it was, they could handle it, Farah thought. And right now, this was good.

After they had finished eating, Farah noticed that Amanda had taken out a duct tape covered notebook and was leafing through it absentmindedly.

“What’s--” Farah asked, breaking the silence awkwardly and pointing to the notebook.

“I’m trying out a new way of sorting out the visions,” Amanda said. “New because it’s any way. At all.”

She set the notebook down on the table and slid it towards Farah, so she could see it better. Every page was covered in drawings and notes, scribbled down hastily, evidently before Amanda’s memory of the vision faded. There were pictures of buildings, people, signs, all slightly odder than normal, with some photos taped in where Amanda had been able to recognize a place or a name. Some of the pictures had red X’s drawn over them.

“Those are the ones I think I’ve already… caught up with, I guess,” Amanda said, pointing to a few. “Like, all those ones with flowers were probably from when we met the holistic florist -- which is _way_ more exciting than it sounds, believe me. And these -- wait, hang on.”

While the two of them had been focused on the notebook, the sun had dipped below the horizon and the streetlights had turned on, revealing an almost cartoonish circle of light on the brick wall of the building across from the sandwich place. A man in a suit walked through it, looking hurriedly behind him as if he was expecting to be followed. He was carrying an old briefcase with what looked like claw marks on it. Farah saw it all in the second or so that the man was in the light, and then he was just a shadow. She was pretty sure, though, that he was what Amanda had reacted to. Farah might not have had any strange powers, but she could tell when someone was extremely suspicious.

“I’ve seen that man in my visions,” Amanda said, picking up the notebook and stuffing it into her pocket. “I’ve seen _that exact image_. We need to follow that guy. Could get intense,” she added, turning back to look at Farah.

“I like intense.” Farah said.

The two of them ran after the man, into the dusk.


End file.
